So, Bravo, I just tried to get into Intervention. And I wonder now, how much youÂ´re asking for input/critique/consulting here, because I would probably offer some insight if you want to. But I hate these people around here talking about other peopleÂ´s games without being asked. So, let us know if youÂ´re open to friendly suggestions.

This group was founded for people like us to help each other out, after all.

Okay, IÂ´ve read it yesterday and at some point I really felt it hard to stay with it. It is too detailed and too system heavy, if you ask me. Doing a list of all crew-members and their degree of availability as player-char or NPC use is just too much info. I feel I have to study and understand it, to be ready to play. And that makes it very inaccessible. Therefore IÂ´d recommend to simplify it, when you do your summary to get new players.

Also it has to be kept in mind that we got a lot of games on the market (yeah, I am a marketarian) right now, and actually a break in at the player market. Therefore it is a difficult time to recruit. Never impossible to do so, but there were times when player went looking for games, you know?

I have been thinking of trimming down the player roster anyways, make it more player friendly.

On the post detailing, I actually got some good comments on that. I've been told that its nice how detailed the posts are (i.e. the web links to various ships and locations). It makes it so the players know precisely what's going on and I've been told that that is a very good thing.

Okay, I think I did not agood job in eplaining what I meant. Your posts are excellent, with all these links and all. But theyÂ´re more of an excellent update than an excellent opening for recruitment. ThatÂ´s a big difference. If you read the wrong post from 133 ABY or ManCubs where you have flashbacks, references to events long past and possible games long beofre, that scares people away. The same if you introduce a system of complicated NPC use-or-not-use rules. This can be excellent for the game, I just recommend, once the recruiting begins in earnest, to give people something more prose to begin with and then, once their on board and in story, to introduce the cool beans.

That way the game is more approachable. My take on it would be - recruit the characters, lke the players. Begin in a Cantina, where freelance pilots are gathered. There people can join the game, then be transferred and introduced to it all . . .

IN GENERAL: I think that while many GMs have become expert recruiters of players, it is the rerecruiting tht still does not work. Some games obviously want players but have no real room for them. Others just try to get Â´em in without a real entry-point. My games suffered from this as well. Looking at Winged-JediÂ´s ManCubs or ChuklesÂ´ Breaking of the World shows what are perefect recruiting environments, though. They both took quite a few new players into their game, lately. I admire that. I never made these things work.

In fact, that's what we're doing. Without spoiling the next events for any of our players who might read this, we're giving new players two options to start from, which would be nice, and both are classical entry level styles.

I have an idea that I've been thinking over for a while. But me not being a veteran here, and having not striking gold yet, I need some help.

It evolves strategy games we all might know: [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires]Age of Empires[/link] (My personal favorite); Then there were spin offs and others tried these games like Lucas Arts: [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Galactic_Battlegrounds]Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds[/link].

I have no idea if this would be helpful or not, leaning towards not, to be honest; but I did attempt to convert the strategy game Total Annihilation to RPF format in Imperial Hammer's Summer Challenges.

If you can find it in the sticky thread Portfolio, it might help start you off?

Well, itÂ´s been a while I GMed here, but I have a game with heavy strategic components on another board and I think there is only one answer to your question. There is no answer to the question. It really all depends on the players, what they enjoy and would like to do. Some people thought AoE was to battle heavy and to little about ressources. Others thought that farming really annoyed them, because they would have preferred to have a direct action style to the game with cool mass battles. Obviously you will aim for a certain player. That should be the goal. What they desire should be the fundamental idea on which you base your game. Because strategy andtactic games are ALL about the motivation. Without amibitous players, such games donÂ´t stand a chance.

That goes for all games. The GM has to be ambitious along with the players, or the game just becomes a flop.

In strategy games, such as System Lords and Clans (Which I only had a brief moment of experience with), there are more details to be recognised. Building up your Clan/Trive/Empire/ect, Having an army, a fighting system. Imperial_Hammer and I discussed this somewhat in depth. I was going to have several classes of soldiers, seige weapons, and structure for said civilization. For each empire, they wouldd have to go through an "evolution" so to speak. In AoE you would go from Nomad to Colonial Age.

Well, it's tangential to your problem, but I'll tell you how I thought of running my Summer Challenge entry:

When I designed Zone Control: Tribal Warfare, my goal was to have a game where the GM's entire role was to maintain an Excel sheet and provide periodic updates of said sheet.

The problem with running a strategy game on the forums is that you can't model it on RTS videogames. Those games revolve around resource management, and that sort of bookkeeping is something computers do very very well, and very very quickly, but human GMs will struggle with: imagine you have X amount of resource A, and you use up Y units to create Z buildings which takes M minutes, and in the meantime you're generating G units per N minutes. (Confused? So am I. The problem is compounded when you have three types of resources and twenty possible units taking up different amounts of resources and build times each, built/trained by five different types of building.)

Thus I decided to model it on board games rather than videogames. Look up games like Settlers of Catan, Race for the Galaxy, Carcossone, Game of Thrones ... I am not an expert in any of those, but after one or two goes what struck me was how they simplified everything to a turn-based system, with clear-cut ways of resolving turn order without using dice or pen&paper, using few enough variables to be easily remembered and mentally tracked by human players ... I could go on about it, but anyway. My point is: turn-based resource management.

The turn-based nature also makes it ideal for play-by-post gaming, too. Each turn (or round, I suppose, is a better term here) can last a week, or however long it takes the GM to update and resolve everything (and you'd probably still need a GM, if only to resolve things when some players don't show up).

Of course, we all have computers, so there can be a bit more complexity in it. We can have a system that's as complex, as, say, can be maintained in a single spreadsheet.

So ... how I tried to handle it in practice* was to have several different types of zones, all of which produced some fixed amount of a resource. Control the Zone, and you automatically generate that resource every turn. Players can then use those resources to create buildings or units, again, every turn. There is no 'build time', no research, indeed no tech tree aside from "salvage" which was deliberately designed as a 'GM Fudge Factor' sort of resource, and would also allow me to introduce plot points on occasion.

Cause you gotta have a plot too - some kind of plot, anyway. In this case, the plot is a mystery: what catastrophe caused modern civilization to end on that planet? It's not nuclear war or there'd be a lot more screwed up stuff, but Something Happened.

So yeah. Boil down resource management to something that can be tracked by hand, and you have a viable play-by-post strategy game.

*In hindsight, the system I designed is still a bit too complex to be efficiently run. Too many types of resources, buildings, units; too many rules governing movement; that sort of thing. I was planning to put it up on the GDG once it's re-launched (HINT HINT, IMPY ) and maybe get some input about how to streamline things further.

[ETA NOTE: Mind you, this is all completely theoretical, and maybe it should go in the theory thread instead, but you guys were discussing it here. ]

Would a game like that work, Xan, with the slow boards however? What I bring into question is the environment in which the game is played. When we look at our game list now, from roughly July (when Intervention started) to now, we're seeing our classic game breakdowns of GMs either now being able to devote enough time to their games, players losing interest and dropping out, or players having other real life issues taking them away from the games. So can the players and game master (and hence the boards, since the players and game masters drive the boards) give the game enough time to develop to get rolling?

Well, I'd say it would work just about as well as any other game, really.

Strategy games inevitably suffer from needing more brainpower than other games - you need to be aware of what resources you have, what resources you're generating, and how this puts you in relation to your opponents. And that's on top of the usual RPing stuff that you do in every game. Naturally it'll require players who are willing to do that sort of thing.

But I also am of the opinion that if a game is sufficiently interesting, it'll take off. You might get 5 players rather than 10, but 5 players is good enough, IMHO.

(Of course, if the GM decides to go AWOL, all bets are off - but again, this goes for all types of games. Except maybe AU Tatooine.)

Belated ETA: Okay ... upon re-reading what I wrote, there is a bit of arrogance there in the "If it is interesting, they will come," hand-wavey statement. I apologise. But - and call me idealistic if you want - I do believe that the RPF is a meritocracy (with some social caveats, as Imp laid out in the Theory and Philosophy thread), so if a game is reasonably good and the GM is dedicated, it will be reasonably successful.

I never owned or played Settlers of Catan, but I've seen it and Wikipedia give a vivid idea of it. I've already started merging ideas together from just looked at these posts, Wikipedia, and other games. I believe in the same theory "So if a game is reasonably good and the GM is dedicated, it will be reasonably successful."

None of my RPGs, except one, actually worked out (And then RL came knocking). So if I go through with this one, I need to get it right.

Would a game like that work, Xan, with the slow boards however? What I bring into question is the environment in which the game is played. When we look at our game list now, from roughly July (when Intervention started) to now, we're seeing our classic game breakdowns of GMs either now being able to devote enough time to their games, players losing interest and dropping out, or players having other real life issues taking them away from the games. So can the players and game master (and hence the boards, since the players and game masters drive the boards) give the game enough time to develop to get rolling?

EDIT: Response

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I had a few things to add, so I will.

As has been said, if the players and gm want it to work, it probably will. Also, as Xan said, games like Settlers of Catan, which I have played a good deal, are very simple, very easy, and provide a very fun and easily modified game. I can completely see things like this working. And the real beauty of the game is that it can move as quickly or slowly as the players want. Updates can be once every TWO weeks, and it will still work.

The problem with long periods of time between gm updates are not that there are long periods of time there, but there is little for players to do. In general, a plot point is given, players react, maybe talk some, travel, fight if applicable, but inevitably they can only do so much before they need some GM interaction. This type of game has much more you can do without the GM, if you so choose. You could RP your people gathering resources. RP a trade agreement with another player. Even RP'ing a battle can go on almost forever with limited GM interaction. (I have read Xan's game in the GDG, and it allows for player to do whatever, because the outcome pretty much is figured by set numbers mixed with GM input, so the palyers can do almost anything in a battle without effecting the outcome too much) so a slow moving community certainly can support a game like this. With three to five more hard-core and devoted players, and maybe a few more casual ones, the game will have plenty of players to run it so long as most of them are reasonably active.

As always, that makes sense in my head. If it DIDN'T make sense in translation, let me know.

I think TheSithGirly made a good point that was shoved away to easy. You need ambitious players. More so than any other format, the strategy game belongs to the players. They make the story. The moves. The plot. The dramaturgy. It can only come from one source. All players need to have the wish to win. Or at least not to fail. Therefore they need to be a special kind of player. The ones who can play fleet battles usually and can live with no real storyline to explore. I think who loves a good tale, like say ManCubs, is wrong here.

A classical example for such a game is WingedJediÂ´s Chess. It is actually the minimum tactical game of all. Sinre, me. Chess. We play, we post, we refelct, but in the end the game dictates our characters even if we both try to play them out as much as possible. The taking of queen, that hurts. Death, havoc. When pawns take each other. It is dubtlessly spawned by no other desire then to win, for both combatants. Even so Sinre and I are really good friends and will be happy either way it goes out, we play to win, obviously. Many players watch only for the drama, which is okay. But would it be enough to play it?

Therefore it is not true every game needs ambitious players. Maybe every game needs dedicated ones. But not necessary those who play for success (in game).

There has been an CIV III idea, developing in the Social Board of the NSWRPF. Might be worth having a look. I also think about the right player number for my latest project. I do not wanna steal the discussion, but could we bring the "player-number" thing up next? Maybe have a look at XanyÂ´s dossier and Codex stuff and so on?

A question to this group. How does one reach the RPF? I mean consider a GM arrives here with a vision and a few players, how does he get himself in touch with players around here? Shall I just cold start my game and see? Or shall I introduce myself and what I want to the GDG or is there a third way I havenÂ´t even thought of?

Well, I guess I should put my two cents in. DarkLordoftheFins had given me advice, and so have others, but -- Join games first. "A Good GM, is a Good Player first"... or something along those lines, right Fin? Anyway, get known, get connected, play in games, then try GMing.

EDIT: Or don't listen to me at all and shoot the musket. If it misses the target ...

A question to this group. How does one reach the RPF? I mean consider a GM arrives here with a vision and a few players, how does he get himself in touch with players around here? Shall I just cold start my game and see? Or shall I introduce myself and what I want to the GDG or is there a third way I havenÂ´t even thought of?

Please, I would be glad to accept any wisdom you can share on this.

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I will quote Hero in saying play some games first. Get your feet wet. I started in War of the Galaxies...way back in the day. I was a young pup then. I've learned and grown a lot since War of the Galaxies.

To me, a GM is someone who:

A) Has been here for a while and proven to be a outstanding RPer, as follows (not all included, just the ones I know really well):

-CmdrMitthrawnuruodo
-GrandAdmiralJello (he doesn't post on the RPF anymore really as far as I know, just the EU Community and others)
-Protege-of-Thrawn (not around much anymore)
-greyjedi125
-GreyJediAntarFodoh (not around anymore)
-Charlemagne19 (he doesn't post in the RPF much anymore it looks like, but on other boards around TFN)
-Earwen_Lightrider
-SkyeLightrider
-Laine_Snowtrekker
-PulsarSkate (not around much anymore)
-SECRETSISTER
-Imperial_Hammer
-Sith-I-5

If any of these players GM a game, I'm likely to join.

B) Have proven to be an excellent RPer, if not an olbie (during my young days) like some of the above:

-Mitth_Fisto

If Mitth_Fisto posts a game, I'm very likely to join.

C) Proven to be a good GM (for me, by how long the game is or how well their players like it):

-BobaMatt
-Ktala
-Winged_Jedi

It is very clear these Game Masters have a very good understanding on how to run their games. They're games are big, they've GM more then one game so far, and they're players seem to like their games.

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Now, with all that said, you don't have to be an olbie around these boards to be a good GM. But you do need to either show awesome RP skills like Mitth_Fisto or be proven to be a good GM like in C).